Philanthropy & Life With Tom Flaim - LLL W/ Glenn Ambrose

In this special episode, I welcome Tom Flaim, who is a Best Selling Author, Minister of the Word, Ministry Leader/Founder, Business Innovator, and much more! Tom is providing clean drinking water to a large section of the Dominican Republic through his ministry.

Transcript

Welcome to Life Lessons and Laughter with your host,

Glenn Ambrose.

Hello,

Hello,

Everybody,

Welcome to the show.

So I've got a very special guest today.

And without further ado,

I'm going to bring him right on.

His name is Tom Flame with the cool name.

Hey,

Hey,

Tom Flame with the cool name.

Tom is pretty cool.

Tom's all right.

Well,

It's out of the Bible,

Right?

So that's cool.

But but Flame,

You know,

You can't beat that even,

You know,

It's spelled a little different,

But it's still pretty it's it's cool,

But it's hot.

All right.

All right.

Yeah.

Yeah.

I'm going way down the corny road now.

So so before we better stop that road.

So,

Yeah,

Why don't you tell the listeners a little bit about yourself?

You've got a heck of a bio.

Well,

I got a cool name because my parents were both immigrants from Italy.

So it's actually a northern Italian name.

It's a very,

Very unique name.

There's not many of us around.

And anyway,

Both my parents are immigrants.

So that means I'm the son of an immigrant,

Which means most children and immigrants are highly motivated.

They're about accomplishments.

They're about doing stuff.

I'm going to do better than my parents,

That kind of thing.

And I think that's true.

And I've seen in my life,

But other other kids of immigrants.

And I try to live that life myself.

Anyway,

I grew up in Chicago.

I'm a city rat.

So right in the heart of the city place,

It's most people wouldn't go to these days.

It's a pretty it's the bottom down area.

It's a little rough area.

But anyway,

I was home for for a long time.

I went to school.

I became a civil engineer and I did my master's work in organizational behavior and development,

Which is kind of like a consulting degree,

So to speak.

And I took jobs as engineers for a while.

I did that for a few years.

I got my license and started my first business.

As soon as I had my license,

I got my license four years out.

You can wait.

You have to wait four years to have to graduation.

Get your license.

I started my first business doing engineering consulting.

Did really well.

Actually sold it after two years.

Took a year off my first retirement and went to work for the company doing sales and to engineers.

McDonnell Douglas and McDonnell Douglas got bought off by Boeing.

And so I ended up working,

Working a career.

When we got bought out,

I was blessed to become a director of sales for our division and left that after about five years and started my second company,

Which was a software company and a consulting company.

And that actually grew pretty significantly.

We became a defense contractor.

Cited the blessing in the 90s to work at a lot of military bases,

Train soldiers on how to use our software within their body armor.

So that was a really fun career.

Then I quit that and took five years off and second retirement and started a water business,

A water purification business.

And we became the world's leader in emergency water purification.

So we would go whenever there was a disaster,

The first thing is water.

Got to have water.

They won't send first responders in until there's water available for them.

So we had my team develop technology based on technology.

It's actually the National Space Station recycling the blood,

Sweat and urine of astronauts in the drinking water.

But we can purify dirty water anywhere on the planet with solar power,

As long as it's not salted,

If it's fresh water.

And we take out all kinds of chemicals and it takes out everything.

It can make clean water anywhere.

And we developed a.

.

.

That's amazing right there in itself.

It was pretty cool,

Man.

I'm telling you,

We were installed in like over 800 hospitals in the United States alone.

So when there's a disaster like we had here in Georgia,

We had a watering break and it's affected four hospitals.

And the biggest hospital had our system.

And so they were able to run out.

They they were actually delivering babies with toilet water because there was no water in the facilities.

They're just taking the water available.

They never shut down.

And the idea is that you never have to shut down.

So we're all over the world.

It's brought me all over the world,

Which has been a wonderful part of my career.

And from that,

We developed a thing called the Strike Team.

So FEMA credentialed us and Georgia Emergency Management credentialed us.

And so we have credentials.

I can go anywhere in the world when there's a disaster and bring water.

So whenever like.

You know,

The great Haiti earthquake,

You know,

They get a call,

They get a call and say,

There's been an earthquake.

Can you get there tomorrow?

And I say,

Yes,

I get on a plane,

I fly in the next day.

Every every I've been every hurricane that hit the United States since 2005.

Up until Hurricane Sandy,

When I finally retired.

But it was so I've been to hurricanes,

Wildfires,

Earthquakes,

Tornadoes,

Volcanic eruptions,

A lot of volcanoes,

Believe it or not.

And I go and I would bring water to people who are people who are all of a sudden didn't have clean water.

And it really was a wonderful part of my career.

I mean,

I loved it more than anything.

And that led into my my ministry,

Which is my nonprofit,

Which is called Water at Work.

And that's a whole nother thing,

Which I'm sure we'll talk about.

Of course,

This thing.

But anyway,

That kind of led me into the Dominican Republic.

And my focus,

My focus on the DR.

Yeah,

I mean,

You're driving me crazy.

You're into all the beaches.

Yeah,

I'm sitting here to do this.

That's not fair.

I just it's not.

It's I can't even I can't even have that.

It's not fair.

Like you just you just described such an amazing life.

And,

You know,

And hey,

Accomplishments are wonderful.

And it's like cool.

You know,

It's impressive when people can accomplish things.

It truly is.

That being said,

When you can accomplish something that helps other people,

That's a whole nother level,

You know.

And and you have a history of doing that.

And,

You know,

That's that's why I say like,

You know,

Yeah,

I'm chilling in the Caribbean while you're not at this particular moment.

But boy,

Your life,

You know,

What what a life you've lived around,

You know.

And and as you get older,

It just went more and more in the direction of helping other people.

Well,

You know,

It's it's funny because I wish there was a plan to it.

I wish I could say,

Oh,

Man,

Well,

I took it out.

I took a couple of years off and I had this really good I wrote a business plan,

Got funded.

No,

We didn't do any of that.

That was never that was never that pretty.

It was always exceedingly ugly.

And my wife was always like,

What are you going to do now?

But anyway,

Yeah,

I think that over the course of time,

I felt more and more drawn to helping people.

It really in my in the software business,

We helped people as consultants,

Which was which was incredibly rewarding.

And in the you know,

When I was doing it as a military contractor,

A defense contractor,

I felt really good because I knew the soldiers going off for war would would have a piece of technology to save their lives.

And I've heard back from soldiers who literally said,

Your software saved my life.

I was in a really bad place.

I was able to get out because of your software.

And I was like,

Wow,

That that that that's chilling.

You know that.

And then and then with the water thing,

It was just it came full circle.

It really brought together my engineering background,

My business background,

My adventure background.

And it just brought all together into one thing.

And then and the ministry of water work is the culmination of it all.

So,

Yeah,

It's been a as an old man looking back,

I can definitely see the,

You know,

The the the the direction God was putting me in,

The direction that I had no control over,

That was preparing me for the life that I ultimately was blessed to live.

Yeah.

And,

You know,

We're talking a little bit before.

And I was,

You know,

I was impressed,

Like a lot of the things that I've accomplished and I've done to,

You know,

You get a lot of people standing on the outside going,

Wow,

That's amazing.

Wow.

Good for you.

Wow.

And you can tell that they don't really fully understand what it's like to do it.

And I mean that in probably the opposite way of most people,

The way most people would think I mean that what I mean is that I think most people.

Unconsciously and somewhat consciously have this idea that we have it all figured out.

And,

You know,

Like you were saying a moment ago,

We put this plan together and then it's just out of the gate and we just knocked it out of the park.

And it's not like that.

It's it's ugly.

And I can't I did at least 90 percent of the things that I did to help my business failed at least 90 percent,

Probably 99 percent,

You know.

But it's just that one thing that drops in.

And I think where,

You know,

When you feel that inner calling and when you know that you're doing something that is right and that is going to help other people and you just lean in without knowing,

I don't think we're supposed to know all the hows.

I think that's God's job,

You know.

So but we do have to lean in and take that step,

Even though we're not sure and even though we don't know how.

Take it anyway and allow God to use us to to manifest these.

And helping other people.

One of my one of my customers at the time was the big red one,

Which is in Fort Benning,

Georgia,

First infantry division.

And then when you when you drive into the into the into the base,

They've got a plaque up on top and it says,

Follow me.

And that's the regimental motto is following because of the one person for their first ones in many times,

At least back in the old days.

And counter to that or different to that,

We read Christ saying,

Come,

Follow me.

You know,

When he when he recruited the apostles,

Come,

Follow me.

It wasn't follow me.

It's come and follow me.

It's an invitation.

It's not.

Follow me is an order.

Follow me,

Says I got a plan.

We're going to execute.

That's the hill we have to take.

Let's take that hill.

That's follow me.

Follow me into the abyss.

Follow me into the whatever it is.

Christ,

God says something different.

God says,

No,

No,

No,

No,

No.

I would I would love for you to follow me.

But it's your choice.

Oh,

Follow me.

Make a decision.

Choose to change your life in a way that will let me as God.

You know,

Pour my favor in your heart.

Just really give you a life that you'd never dream possible.

I would never dream some of the stuff I've done.

I found myself in in Somalia illegally.

I've been chased by drug lords in Colombia.

I've had all kinds of adventures that I knew that God was going to protect me through it all.

I was never worried.

But I'm looking back and I think as a young man,

I would have thought,

You're out of your mind now.

I'm an engineer.

I'm going to build buildings.

That's what I'm going to do.

I'm going to build buildings.

That's what I'm good at.

That's what I went to school for.

That's what my parents expect me to do.

You know,

And in my life is not building buildings.

Yeah,

And that's it.

You know,

We do.

You're right.

We have to choose.

We have to choose to walk by faith,

Not by sight.

You know,

We have to we have to lean in.

And,

You know,

It's it's it's I'm so excited about this right now because I'm in another stage of that right now in my life,

You know,

And it's so exciting.

And and since I've done it before,

You know,

I mean,

I did it 21 almost about 21 years ago now.

You know.

First,

And then that led,

You know,

That was my spiritual awakenings that led to everything.

But then I did it with my business.

You know,

I don't know,

Six,

Eight years later or something.

And so now I'm looking back and all that indecision and fear.

It's like I kind of laugh at it now because I'm like,

I've been here before.

I know I know the indecision doesn't mean anything.

I know that the fear doesn't mean anything.

And like,

I'm just going to lean in anyway.

And I know it's going to blow up into things bigger.

That's going to help more people than I could ever imagine,

You know.

But,

You know,

That's the human nature is to be fearful.

It's human nature to be fearful.

We grew up,

You know,

Almost no one's afraid of the dark when they're born.

You know,

All of a sudden you're afraid of the dark.

You learn these things.

We learn fear.

We learn,

Oh,

I'm a white guy.

I got a fear of black people or I am,

You know,

I'm a you know,

I'm a college graduate.

I got a fear of people who drive a truck for a living or we all fear.

Things are different from us.

Right.

And that fear is just embedded in every fiber of our of our being.

And God says,

No,

No.

Live a life of abundance.

Live a life of of adventure.

Do things because I've got your back.

I got your back.

If I'm for you,

Who could be against you?

Right.

And I think that that's and we don't.

We fight that at every step.

But every single time we look at that,

You look at like so I've got a I've got a grandson who's going to be entering.

I'm going to enter an elementary school and kindergarten.

And there's a fear.

It's like,

Well,

This is different than my preschool.

All of a sudden,

I got to get on a bus.

I got to do all this stuff.

It's like,

Yeah,

Yeah,

I'm worried.

But we all know that once he gets there,

He's going to love it.

He's going to do great.

It's going to empower him to get to the next level.

It's like getting married.

You're scared to death.

I mean,

I'm very I'm ordained.

So I marry a lot of young people and they're scared to death.

They should be scared.

It's a big decision.

It's a big thing.

But then when you get married,

It's like,

Wow,

This is the greatest thing that ever happened in my life.

I've got I've got a great I've got a great spouse and I've got someone to spend my life with,

You know.

So every time we're feared for those big decisions.

God ultimately pushes you.

God ultimately says,

Give her the ring,

Just do it.

You know,

Go to that next class,

Just do it.

Or,

You know,

Ask that girl on a date,

Ask that guy out to something.

Just do it.

If you hear the word,

No,

It's OK.

You know,

Try something different.

Try it.

Try somebody else.

Try something.

Just try a different job.

Try try something.

Do it.

Nothing is.

I mean,

I told everyone who's ever everyone who's ever worked in my companies.

There's literally nothing you can do to hurt me.

You may make a mistake.

It's going to cost me a little bit of money up front.

Yeah,

It might cost me a little bit of just don't hurt my reputation.

You remember when you're talking to somebody,

You represent me and my family and our company,

You know,

But you can't hurt me.

So do stuff.

Try something different.

Yeah.

Just.

Be creative in life and let let God take that,

That,

That,

That,

That mustard seed of faith and let it grow.

You know that much of the parable,

The mustard seed goes way beyond just faith.

It goes way beyond faith and encompasses all of life.

You know,

You've got to we've always got to remember God's got our back.

You know,

If we put our faith in Jesus Christ,

We have nothing to fear,

Nothing to fear.

I want to go without any shots,

Which was which is insane.

I think it's illegal not to do that.

You know,

I found myself going through the jungles of Kenya,

Up and up in Somalia and Ethiopia,

You know,

And never got sick,

Never got healed.

I was surrounded by by by people with AK-47s who normally kill missionaries,

Never,

Never had an issue,

Never had an issue.

Now,

That's not I'm looking.

I didn't go looking for that.

It happened.

We were chasing a Bedouin tribe across the desert because they they run out of water and they were they were just being decimated.

A tribe of like 1500 people was down to 500 people because they kept dying of thirst and they just couldn't find water.

So something they called me and said,

Can you help them?

And I said,

Sure.

So I went next,

Literally the next morning,

It was Thanksgiving.

My wife never forgave me.

It was Thanksgiving morning.

I got up in Africa,

You know,

And and it's stupid.

I mean,

A normal person doesn't do that kind of stuff.

But,

You know,

I knew I knew that God was behind it.

And it was a great adventure.

I'm glad I went.

We did help some people.

And it was it was worth doing.

You know,

It was one of those things I like to look back on and go,

Yeah,

That was worth doing.

That was it.

But,

You know,

You look back,

I don't remember anything that wasn't worth doing.

I can point I can point to.

Thousands of failures,

Thousands of bad decisions.

And I can't remember any that affected who I am right now,

What I'm doing right now or my success in life,

Ultimately.

Not in a negative way.

Right.

If anything,

You learned from it and grew from it.

Right.

Exactly.

Also,

You know,

Life is prologue.

It's not history.

If you treat life as history,

It's static.

You don't learn from your done.

It's I made a mistake.

I'm going to forget about it and move on.

Well,

They don't forget about it.

You made a mistake for a reason.

You know,

Whatever whatever was you need to learn from it and build on it.

People look at failure like it's something bad.

And it just isn't.

The failure in life is.

It's the necessary stepping stones to get across the great divide,

Get across the river.

You know,

We have to fail to ultimately succeed.

And it also makes the success that much more sweet.

You know,

It's when you do get successful,

When your company,

Your company does do well,

Or you and your my career was going good.

And,

You know,

It was all the failures that made it taste so good.

You know,

It was all it's all the sins that I recognize in my life that make my my Christian,

My my current state of faith so good.

You know,

Because I recognize who I was.

I know who I was.

I know the stuff I did to people.

I know what I did to girls.

I was dating,

You know,

Horrible stuff,

Terrible.

You know,

Not not not physically or anything,

But just,

You know,

Treating people badly.

You know,

It was all about me.

You know,

It was all about me.

And,

You know,

Once you get past that in life.

Boy,

It's beautiful.

It's just beautiful.

Yeah.

And and it's like,

I guess that,

You know,

Those.

Helping others and understanding it's not all about us and fear,

They are,

They all wrap in together,

Because like if we're really self-absorbed and we're thinking it's about us,

Then that gives a great place for the fear to breed and to hold us and keep us stuck.

So we're just sitting there.

Well,

I don't want to experience something I might not like or I don't really like my life now.

If if I fail at something,

Then I'm going to like my life even less.

It's like that's not how it works.

Like,

You know,

Like I've had a lot of people tell me,

You know,

That that they want to do things,

But they're not sure if it's going to work and they don't want to waste their time.

And and I mean,

They're talking about dating.

They're talking about starting a business,

A side hustle,

All kinds of stuff.

And it's like,

OK,

So let me get this straight.

So so like you're already experiencing a life you don't want.

If you take action,

You got a 50 50 shot that you might succeed.

But if you don't take any action,

You've got 100 percent chance to not like your life tomorrow.

So so right there.

And then your fear is that you you you might fail like and and you don't want to waste time failing.

So so chasing your dreams and trying to make better your life and to try to help other people or,

You know,

Go over whatever direction is moving you at the time.

Going in that direction could be a waste of time if it doesn't give you a particular outcome that you want.

But sitting at home,

Watching TV and scrolling on your phone is not a waste of time.

Huh?

Yeah,

I agree.

I agree.

You know,

I don't you don't want to paint a picture like it's all it's all flowers and butterflies.

You know,

It's nice.

It's just the opposite.

I mean,

You're going to live a life full of of failure,

Of of of of worry,

You know,

And all these things.

But that's when God builds your faith.

Those are the challenges.

Those are the times when your faith is built,

When you have to rely on someone else.

I thousands of times,

Right.

I could not have gotten through what I was getting through without without helping God.

There's just no way.

Right.

I mean,

You know,

It's very scary situations,

Very painful situations.

I mean,

You know,

I mean,

I've been through a lot of pain in life and it doesn't go away.

It's not to say it goes away.

I just always knew that it was going to get better.

And I always knew in the back of my heart,

You know,

That that God was going to make something of it.

For some reason,

I was going through this illness,

A sickness within,

You know,

Within your children or your parents or your friends or whatever.

You know,

It's so hard,

Especially for young.

I do a lot of mentoring of young people,

And it's so hard.

You see them going through the first real disaster,

The first personal disaster,

A parent dies.

A girl leaves him after five years.

You think you're going to marry him and she walks out or he walks out or or you lose that job that you thought you were doing great.

And all of a sudden you get fired.

And,

You know,

It's so scary.

I mean,

Life is hard and it's scary.

But man,

It's it's not meant to be lived alone.

It's meant to be lived with other people and community.

And it's meant to be lived with your God,

With God in heaven who protects you and who gives you strength.

You know,

Christ,

I can,

You know,

I can do all things through Christ to empowers me,

You know,

Or strengthens me.

And it's true.

I mean,

It's really,

Really true.

You're not going to go through any less disaster,

Any less fear,

Any less pain.

You're just going to go through it easier and you're going to recognize it for what it is,

A learning experience.

Right.

And I think that that's so important.

You know,

It's it's not I think people have this this vision that,

You know,

If if they lean into God,

Whatever that might look like for them,

Then that means that their life is going to go smooth all the time.

And it doesn't.

It's just.

But I think the other thing that we can bring into this aspect is that most of our emotional suffering is resistance to what's going on.

That's you know,

So it's it's our resistance to what is.

So it's like,

You know,

Do if you go through a difficult time in your life,

Once you have faith and you trust in that faith,

Then you don't resist it so much because you can see it as a learning curve.

You can see it as growth opportunity.

You can understand that things aren't supposed to go the way that you think they are all the time,

And that's OK.

And then you don't have all that resistance to what's happening.

So when you go through these ups and downs,

It's not instead of like this huge roller coaster,

It kind of levels it out.

And yeah,

You still do experience a little bit of suffering,

But it's completely manageable and it doesn't knock you around so much.

You know,

I think that's an excellent analogy.

It is like it is like a smoothing out of the roller coaster because you realize that your highs are not that high because it's all God who did it anyway.

Exactly.

Exactly.

That's such a huge point.

Whatever I've achieved,

You know,

You just put the foot across.

Now,

Here are another accolade,

Another trophy.

You put the foot across this.

That's where it belongs down your trophy case.

So,

You know,

You learn it smooths out the highs and smooths out the lows.

It just makes life a lot more manageable and overall a lot more enjoyable,

A lot more enjoyable.

Yeah.

And and like often when I'm explaining those highs,

Like I think people get scared when you tell them that the highs are going to level out,

Too.

But the way that I describe it is it's like the high,

High,

The wow.

Oh,

My God,

I'm so amazing.

Those you think they feel good.

You think that's what you want.

But once you once those level out and and your faith and your love,

It gets deep and connected to God.

Then what you're.

Yes,

You don't have as much as those highs because you're not claiming responsibility for the successes.

You know,

It's God.

You know,

It's God's work.

But what you get in place of those highs is this deep,

Deep knowingness that you are loved,

Cared for,

Supported and everything is OK.

And I mean,

Walking through life every day with that inside of your heart.

I mean,

Yeah,

It's so much more powerful and so much better than those highs you thought you wanted.

It also leads to an attitude of gratitude when you're always when you're grateful.

I walk through every single day.

I said,

Thank you.

I mean,

I'm not talking about once.

I say thank you every meal.

I say thank you when I wake up in the morning.

I think I go to bed at night.

I say thank you.

I'm just I'm looking out my window right now.

And there's this beautiful crepe myrtle that just came into bloom.

It's a late bloomer.

It just came in a blue line.

Oh,

Wow.

I got flowers here today.

I literally I said,

Thank you,

Lord.

What a cool thing to see this.

Thank you so much for that.

You know,

You just when you when you're when you're grateful,

You don't have time for the the BS.

You really don't.

You don't get stuck in the mud.

You just don't get stuck in the mud.

You realize you just just step out of it.

Move on.

I think that that's a I don't know.

It's a life lesson that it took me a long time to learn.

But I I do want to say with unequivocally that there are people suffering tremendously in this country and where I serve and all over the world.

There are people right now that for the last three years,

Every single night they run to a bomb shelter.

You know,

There is serious pain.

There's serious.

Just just.

Sometimes I look at people's lives ago.

Wow.

I don't know.

I could never have been that strong to to to have done that or raise that child or to I couldn't I would never have had that strength.

I said,

Thank you,

Lord,

For knowing that I'm not strong enough to do that.

You know,

I'm not strong enough to do that.

You know,

I tell people all the time,

You know.

We as Americans,

I know this goes out worldwide,

But speaking as an American,

We have to look at ourselves.

And if you're a young person,

Especially you've been given access to the greatest amount of wealth ever in human history.

You've been given access to the greatest amount of influence in human history.

You've been given access to the greatest amount of education in human history.

You know,

What are you going to do with it?

Are you going to sit here and mope in your in your bedroom and play video games like I can't get a good job?

The hell no,

Man.

Get out there.

Do something with it.

Try try different things.

Go for stuff.

You know,

Live your life.

It's an adventure you're never going to have today.

You know,

This this hour we're going to spend together,

I'm never going to be able to relive it.

I want to make every minute count with you because I'm not going to have that minute back.

And I think that I think faith does that for you.

A true and sincere faith builds that up in you.

It makes you realize how to be grateful for what you have,

Not to feel guilty.

I drive a real nice car.

I have a real nice home.

I live the life I want to live.

Right.

I mean,

I'm not.

But I also give away a significant portion of my wealth every year.

You know,

It's it's it's a you know,

There's a balance you can have in life where.

Yeah,

You can you can you can be grateful for what you have.

Enjoy what you have,

Because I worked hard.

I think I deserve it.

I deserve a nice home.

I've worked my butt off all my life.

I deserve a nice car.

You know,

I mean,

But I also get such an insane amount of joy from stroking a truck or helping somebody out or giving money to somebody who needs it or if I can.

I'm retired now,

So I don't have income coming in anymore.

So it's it's it's harder when you fix things.

I'm not,

You know,

The old days.

So I'll just do another deal.

I'll make another deal somewhere.

I'll I'll make up that money.

You know,

It'll come back in from somewhere else.

Well,

The days are gone,

So it kind of limits all my money pretty much goes to my ministry,

How the water work.

But it's a but it's still a way to live life.

You know,

An attitude of gratitude,

An attitude of generosity will never,

Ever do you wrong.

You cannot outgive God.

You cannot out serve God.

You cannot say,

Well,

I mean,

We were talking earlier.

I coached my son's hockey team for 12 years.

What are you coached your kids to?

I thought that's pretty good,

But that's not that I mean,

You can't.

It was great to do,

It was fun to do,

I enjoyed it thoroughly,

But it took time away from business,

It took time away from my other son,

It took time away from my wife.

You know,

There's a sacrifice with everything you do.

But I think that,

You know,

If you approach things as ultimately positive because you prayed about it,

You feel good about this.

And by the way,

For all you people out there,

You know,

God isn't probably going to sit here and speak to you like we're speaking to you.

It's not,

It doesn't happen that way.

When God spoke to me about water work,

I just felt it on my heart.

All of a sudden,

I knew exactly what I needed to do.

I just knew what I needed.

I knew the right thing to do.

The question is,

Are you going to listen to that voice or are you going to say,

No,

I'm going to do what I want to do.

I'm going to go back home.

I was in the Dominican Republic and I was in a really bad place,

One of the batays out in the middle of nowhere by Haiti,

On the Haitian border.

And I remember,

I remember distinctly saying,

Okay,

Lord,

I'll do this.

I'll just do it.

And I went home and I did my best.

And now we have water work,

Which is providing water in the gospel of tens of thousands of people every day in Dominican Republic that wouldn't have happened if I would have just said,

No,

I'm going to go back home.

I'm going to build my business.

You know,

I got this,

This division I want to start.

I think I can take my product and move it from emergency water into,

We thought of this,

Into the proper community,

You know,

Into the people preparing for the end of the world or World War III or whatever.

And the whole prepper market is very large.

We can move our product there and probably make some pretty good coin.

You know,

Let's,

Let's go back.

And I literally had to say,

No,

I'm not going to do that.

I'm going to take my energy and instead of trying to develop another vertical,

My company,

I'm going to develop a vertical for God.

I'm going to develop this ministry and see where it goes.

And that's what it is.

It's a,

It's a,

It's a choice,

You know?

I think a lot of people are afraid to walk away.

I got to make more money.

I got to do another vertical.

I got to find this.

Like,

Yeah,

I got to hit another,

My quotas up,

You know,

50% this year.

My son's quarter was,

Was,

Was,

Was a little like 60% increase.

You know,

What do you,

What do you do with that?

You know,

I got to work harder.

I got to work harder.

I got to work harder.

And you real,

And you don't realize the maze you get caught in.

Right.

You got to work harder.

But at some point you got to say,

I'm done working harder.

Um,

I got to do something that's more meaningful.

I got to do something,

Something that's going to,

That's going to be significant.

I want something,

You know what?

My grandkids are going to go down to Dominican Republic and they're going to see a whole bunch of water plants,

A whole bunch of healthy children because of what their grandfather did.

I feel good about that.

It's an old man.

I feel good about that.

And I wish,

I wish I would have started that earlier in life.

I wish I would have started that when I was in my thirties and forties to get involved with something that I could point to and say,

Yeah,

I feel good about that.

I I'm involved with something bigger than me.

And most people don't do that.

They don't have anything bigger than them.

They work for their company.

They work,

They got their family.

They got their friends.

They got their habits,

You know,

Their,

Whatever it is,

Bowling,

Drugs,

Whatever it is,

You know,

They've got the things that are theirs and they don't get beyond it.

Right.

And when God's speaking,

They,

They end up talking themselves out of it a lot of times,

You know,

Because like,

Yeah.

And like you said,

You know,

You felt it in your heart and you know,

That's of course where,

Where I feel it too.

And it,

And it's,

It's,

But we have to slow down enough so we can actually feel that and go,

You know,

Like a lot of what I teach is teaching people to connect with that feeling because we're so caught up in our heads all the time,

You know?

And it's,

It's like,

Well,

Just,

Just wait,

Like put your attention on,

Like,

I'll,

I'll tell people,

I'll be like,

What,

What's a two plus two.

And there'll be like four and I go,

Okay,

Now put your attention on your head.

Does it feel like that answer came from your head?

And a lot of times they're like,

Yeah,

Yeah.

I kind of feels like that answer came from my head,

You know,

And then I'll ask him something about that they feel in their heart,

You know,

Or something that they know,

Like,

Do you know you love your children?

Don't focus on the fact that you love that.

Don't focus on love.

Just focus on the fact that you know,

That you love your children.

How do you know that you love your children?

Now,

Where do you feel that?

That's like,

Well,

I feel it in my heart.

You know,

I don't,

I don't think it in my head.

I feel it in my heart.

And it's like,

Okay,

That's the difference between thinking and knowing,

You know,

That's the difference between,

You know,

And,

And we'll use our brain to talk us out of stuff that we know in our heart.

And it's like,

No,

We got to learn to separate those two,

Follow the,

The,

The heart given knowingness that God supplies us with when there's something we're really supposed to be doing.

Well,

I love that,

Man.

I'm going to steal that.

That's good.

As a pastor,

I'm allowed to steal all the time,

Right?

We still have good ideas from people all the time,

But,

But that is a really good,

That's a really good way of looking at it.

I never thought of that.

That's really,

That's,

That's wonderful.

Yeah.

And I mean,

You know,

All this stuff is,

Is this wisdom is,

You know,

Maybe I found a different way to say it,

But it's as old as God.

So it ain't mine either.

So you ain't stealing it from me,

Right?

You're stealing it from him.

If you're going to steal,

Steal from the best.

Yeah.

If we're going to borrow,

We'll call it borrowing just so it sounds better.

I like it all the time.

Don't say that.

Don't people understand you?

I don't know.

They'll be fine.

But yeah,

It's a,

Um,

It's funny because,

You know,

I,

When I wrote my first book,

It's called first Jesus Christ.

And it tells a story of water work.

And it's like the DNA of water work and how I got started and what I was feeling when I got started and how hard it was to make that commitment.

And we had a significant failure about year three that was shipped me to my core.

And we stopped literally stopped for a year.

And I restarted the whole thing.

New people knew everything we had to cancel.

And it was,

Um,

It was brutal because,

Uh,

I had to tell people who put their faith in me and trust in me.

Um,

We failed miserably and we have nothing to show for it.

I know you invested in us.

You,

You were kind enough to give us some of your money and,

Um,

What we were doing,

Things have changed.

The parameters have changed and it doesn't work anymore.

I'm talking about a number of things,

But one specific thing was in a Dominican Republic,

You used to be able to drill a well anywhere in the country and come up with contaminated fresh water.

Super.

That's easy.

Cleaning contaminated fresh water.

At least for my technology was a walk in the park.

It was inexpensive,

Fast and easy.

Then about 15,

12 years ago,

10,

12 years ago,

The whole country became susceptible to saltwater and the ocean waters infiltrated the caves under the Island and now all the wells have salt them a lot,

Especially around the coastal areas and around the,

The plains.

You know,

When you get away from the mountains around the East side and the West side,

Not where you're at,

But around the coast.

But it's,

There's salt on the water.

And so now you're pulling up seawater.

Well,

To,

To,

To make seawater drinkable is it's no exaggeration.

A hundred times harder.

I mean,

It takes all kinds of different technology,

A ton of power,

Uh,

Electricity,

A lot of sourced water.

Um,

It just,

It just,

We had to stop everything we were doing and everything we did was basically way to throw it all away and start over again because of something happened in nature.

And that's,

That's,

Uh,

That's hard,

Man.

I was,

I was in tears with people.

Like,

I know,

You know,

I know you gave me your last two coins,

Right?

As it's in the Bible,

Two copper coins.

I know you gave me from sacrificially and I'm telling you right now,

I promise I'm going to,

I'm going to do better.

We're going to figure this out.

We're going to figure this technology out.

We're going to figure out how to do this right.

And I'm going to,

I'm going to make this right.

And that's what got me to start again.

We started all over again and we went with reverse osmosis and ozone and,

And,

Uh,

UV and,

Uh,

All kinds of technology to make the water clean and healthy.

And we did that and it took us a number of years to figure it out.

And for the last six,

Seven years now,

We've,

We've got it down.

And now we're,

We're just scaling our model.

We're not,

We're not changing anything anymore.

What we have works great.

And so we're just building more and more and more.

That's,

That's what we do now.

But anyway,

It's,

Uh,

You know,

It's,

It's,

It's,

It's hard when you fail sometimes and because other people are involved,

You're failing your job and your wife feels it.

You're failing your job.

It's you,

You,

You fail because you got a boss who is toxic and you come home from work and the first thing's out of your mouth of venom and you don't want to do that.

You don't want to sit there and yell at your kids,

But you know,

It's like,

Would you shut up?

I just need to sit down,

Give me a glass of wine.

I just need to chill,

You know?

And that comes out and you know,

You don't want to live that way,

But sometimes you do and it's,

Uh,

You got to fight it,

Man.

You just gotta,

You gotta fight it by,

You gotta fight it by letting God fight that battle for you.

You can't win against the world.

You cannot win against culture.

Culture is too strong.

It's just too strong.

You cannot win against it and you need help.

And the only help you're going to get is from the one culture that's strong and that's,

That's,

That's,

That's the kingdom culture.

Kingdom culture will defeat the world's culture every time,

But you gotta have faith and you gotta,

You gotta understand it first.

You gotta go to church.

You gotta understand what you want to believe in.

You can't just say,

Oh,

I know Jesus.

Yeah.

The devil knows Jesus.

Everyone knows Jesus.

That doesn't mean anything,

You know,

You really need to get into it.

I think that,

Um,

And that involves an effort and involves,

That's the first step is really saying,

I honestly want to understand.

I want to know,

I want to know if this is what I want to believe.

That's what happened to me.

I started out,

I mean,

I've read the Koran.

I've read all the Dalai Lama's works.

I've met the Dalai Lama.

I've,

I've,

I've,

Uh,

Read the works of Confucius and Buddhism.

And I kept,

Something was always wrong.

I just kept coming back to,

Coming back to Christ.

And ultimately I came back and I said,

Okay,

This is what I want to believe.

And it was,

It was important for me as an engineer,

Maybe to go through that process of saying,

Okay,

That that's crazy.

That doesn't make sense to me.

That's not right.

And I'll never forget the first time I went to a church,

I taught that the pastor welcomed me to the front door.

I said,

Hey,

Let me tell you who I am.

I said,

I said,

He said,

Who's that?

I said,

I may not be your worst nightmare,

But I'm going to be a nightmare to you.

And he started laughing.

I said,

Why?

I said,

Because you know what I am going to do?

I'm,

I'm new at this,

But I'm going to do everything I can to make you fail.

I'm going to do everything I can to find a hole in theology.

I'm going to do everything I can to find a hole in this whole Christ thing.

And I'm going to do that because I want to know that what I'm going to believe is the right thing.

And I'll tell you what,

It took me a little thought a year and I walked away going,

I can't find a hole in this.

This is,

This is exactly what makes sense to me.

At least I know there's other people who feel that's fine.

I,

I,

I tend to be very tolerant of other theologies and other things,

You know,

Whatever,

That's fine.

Um,

And I hope I'm wrong,

Quite frankly.

I'm hope this whole gap thing is wrong because,

Uh,

There's a lot of people who are going to be spending an eternity in,

Uh,

Without any,

Any love or comfort.

And that bothers me.

It bothers me a lot.

And,

Um,

You know,

Maybe it's best if we all just go in the hole and go away.

You know,

It bothers me.

The people I love dearly are so caught up in who they are.

They're so arrogant.

They're scientists.

I'm a scientist.

So I hang out with a lot of scientists and scientists are either,

You won't find any scientists on the fence.

Guys like me,

We're either all in or all out.

And because we have,

We,

We go through our process.

Do you make sense or it doesn't for me,

It made sense.

Um,

But anyway,

I think that's a beautiful point.

You know,

I heard that many years ago and it really jumped out at me and I've used it ever since that,

That I heard it said,

You know,

I'm paraphrasing,

But basically it was,

Uh,

It was a man of science.

He said,

I don't,

I don't understand why men of science and men of religion seem to butt heads.

He says,

Because I'm a man of science.

And to me,

If you follow the science deep enough,

You find God.

And I believe that as well.

I have spent two decades on that.

And I'm telling you,

As a scientist,

It takes way more faith to believe in atheism or to believe in a biological evolution,

You know,

Evolution is real.

You know,

A moth,

A moth will evolve into two different kinds of moths.

That's fine.

But you're not going to find anywhere in the world or anything in the fossil record where a fish became a monkey.

You know,

It doesn't exist.

You know,

There's,

There are no,

The fossil record goes,

If you look at turtles,

For instance,

Turtles are one of the oldest creatures on earth.

You look at turtles,

The earliest fossil show a complete turtle.

There's no halfway turtle.

There's no turtle,

You know,

Just forming or whatever.

It doesn't exist.

You know,

Even on earth today,

When you look at it today,

Yeah,

They're single cell bacteria.

Single cell bacteria,

Single cell,

One cell,

But then to get to the next lowest life form,

It's 10,

000 cells.

So where are all the organisms with 13 cells,

50 cells,

A hundred cells?

You know,

Where is that?

Where is that change?

You don't,

You just don't see it.

It's,

I can talk about this forever.

So we should probably,

It's a pet peeve of mine,

But I'm telling you as a scientist,

If you follow the scientific record,

If you follow the,

If you look at it with open mind,

If you,

If your worldview becomes a white piece of paper,

You remove the worldview that says God did everything we've removed the worldview that says it was complete random chance and just look at it.

And you will come to God.

I'm,

I'm,

You know,

And I think you just said two things that I found very important on my,

On my journey.

And one,

You said you had an open mind because like you,

You could have,

You could have gone to Christianity and said,

I'm going to find every hole.

You know,

If there's a hole,

I'm going to find it.

And with a closed mind,

You would have found one.

You would have talked yourself into believing one.

So even though you were,

You know,

There's nothing wrong with skeptical.

I love skeptical.

I think it's wonderful.

I think it's healthy.

But you have to have that open mind to be able to see the truth.

Once you do see it,

You know,

That,

And along those same lines,

It's that you became a blank slate.

Like I often describe when I went through my spiritual awakenings,

You know,

21 years ago,

That,

That is,

That was one of the biggest gifts I gave myself.

You know,

I went through the 12 steps getting sober and blew open spiritually then,

But,

You know,

It was my sponsor at the time that,

You know,

He said,

Is there any area of your life that you didn't screw up,

That's not screwed up.

And I'm like,

No,

I,

I got it all.

You know,

I I'm homeless.

My body is shutting down.

I'm broke.

My son's 1400 miles away,

Blah,

Blah,

Blah,

Blah,

Blah.

You know?

And,

Uh,

He says,

Okay,

Did you try to destroy your life?

And I said,

Well,

No,

I,

He says,

So you tried to do well.

I said,

Yes.

He said,

Okay,

Well,

Would it be fair to say that your best thinking sucks?

And I'm a very logical guy.

And I was like,

Yeah,

You know,

I'm following the science.

Like it's hard to argue.

Like my best thinking sucks.

And at that moment,

And he said,

Okay,

So would you,

Would it might be a good idea to just abandon your way of thinking and try my way for a few months just to see if it works.

And if it doesn't,

I will gladly refund your misery.

That is,

That's,

That is one thing that I did that I think really helped a lot when I was starting to be led towards faith in Christ,

I said,

Okay,

Dude,

I'm all in,

I'm going to try this for three months.

I'm going to be all in.

And,

And I was,

I was all,

I went to church.

I went to Bible study.

I did everything I could to understand and learn.

And at the end of three months,

Man,

I was,

I was on fire for Christ.

I was there.

It was,

It was,

It was just insanely obvious to me.

It's like,

Man,

How can you be such an idiot all your life?

So it was,

You know,

You're right.

But your best thinking is,

Is flawed because we're flawed as people.

We're just flawed by nature.

Yeah.

Right.

That's right.

And that's,

That's really what it is.

It's,

I think it's being all in because like I blew open spiritually so much,

I mean,

Very honestly,

Very rarely have I met somebody that's been through the 12 steps that blew open as wide as I did.

I just,

It was,

It was,

It was amazing.

It was overpowering.

It was mind boggling,

You know,

But when I look at it,

I go,

You know,

Of course I go,

Well,

Why,

You know,

Why did that happen to me?

And when I look back,

I had this desire to die.

That was so deep that I had been cultivating and fantasizing about for years because I hated my life.

And it was so deep that I wanted to die so bad that to me,

The 12 steps represented the final chance.

So,

And,

And it said this little thing,

It said half measures avail us nothing.

So point growing up playing sports.

I was like,

I knew what it took to give 110% and I knew that I couldn't run from my own awareness.

So if I gave it 99%,

That doesn't mean I get 99% of the results.

That means I get zero of the results.

So I want it.

So really what fueled me and I've told people this before is,

Is kind of warped as it is,

It worked really well.

I just,

I wanted to die so bad that I was like,

And I was so tired that I was like,

I am not going through these 12 steps,

Putting in 99% of the effort,

Having them not work no deep in my heart that I didn't give it 110% and then have to start back over.

I don't have that.

I'm going to either launch or die.

Those are my only two options.

I am not willing to have either one.

And so every time I wanted to do something half ass,

Every time I wanted to balk at something,

Every time I wanted to just kind of do it,

But not fully do it.

I thought of that.

And I was like,

Do you have the effort?

Do you have the energy to start over through this process again?

And I went,

No,

I don't.

So I gave it 110% and because I did,

You know,

It says,

It says,

Um,

You will be amazed before you are halfway through.

And after my fifth step before my sixth,

Which is halfway through,

I started blowing open and I was like,

Oh my God.

So I became that blank slate and I fully committed.

And I think that that's,

You know,

God sees inside of our heart.

So when you're fully committed like that and you're giving it everything you have,

God's going to show up every time.

Every single time.

But when you're over there,

Dilly dallying,

Navigating your way around,

Staying stuck,

Pretending that you're efforting,

It's not going to happen.

Right.

Exactly.

I agree.

They got to want,

You know,

I look at it as a father,

My greatest joys in life.

Some of my greatest joys in life were watching my kids achieve with what I gave them.

Like I gave my son a guitar,

A bass guitar,

My youngest son.

And he ended up being like really good,

Really good.

And it was like I go watch him on stage and there's all these people cheering and stuff.

And I was like,

Wow,

God,

Man,

That's my boy up there.

You know,

I'm thinking God's the same way.

He's our heavenly father.

Yeah.

He's looking at us and saying,

Well,

I gave I gave Glenn this opportunity.

And look,

He's killing it.

He's over there going,

Hey,

Hey,

Hey,

Hey,

Moses,

Come check this out.

What are you doing down there,

Man?

This guy's killing it.

Oh,

I love that.

I believe God takes great joy in watching his children get it and achieve for him and to build the kingdom for him and to give him the glory and to recognize that that we're just here.

We're just we're just a stopping point on our way to our ultimate life.

You know,

He's he's looking forward to being with us forever in person.

And I can't wait for it.

I really can't.

You know,

I think that,

You know,

But but,

You know,

When I look at.

It's funny because I've got a guy who's a significant financial donor to our ministry,

Really significant,

And I've known for a lot of years,

Every single year for eight years now has given us a very,

Very large amount of money and it's helped us a lot.

And he said,

I said,

Dude,

Don't you want to come down there and see it sometime?

He never goes.

I said,

You don't come down.

I'll take you down.

We'll run down Dominican just for a weekend.

It's still don't need to go.

And he says,

I'm watching you.

He goes,

I am just having so much fun watching what you're doing down there with our money.

He goes,

I'm having so much fun watching what you what you're what you guys are achieving with my resources.

It's a he goes,

But he goes,

I love it because I just love it.

I just love getting together for lunch once in a while so I can hear more about what you're doing.

The next bill you're going to do or or the children,

You know,

Whatever or,

You know,

Whatever.

And it's it's humbling,

Man.

It's it's humbling.

And it's a but it is an insight into into the nature of God.

I believe that he is looking down at us going,

Come on,

Man.

Come on,

Dude.

So you can,

I got you.

Let's do this.

I'm talking to you.

Listen,

I had a guy just three weeks ago,

Somebody I'm mentoring told me,

He said,

Hey,

He goes,

I was in prayer last night.

I said,

Oh,

Good for you.

I said,

What did you hear?

He said,

What do you mean?

I said,

Well,

You were in prayer.

What did you hear?

He said,

I was praying to God.

I prayed for the people I know are sick.

I was praying for the people and in,

You know,

In Russia and Ukraine,

I was praying for all these things.

I said,

That's great.

What did you hear?

Because if you don't hear anything from God,

Then you're not in communication.

I'm just telling God stuff.

Right.

It's a two way.

It's a two way relationship.

How would you like it if your kid came to you and just did it and you and they don't listen to you.

They have,

They're already in their mind.

They don't want to listen to you.

Well,

How long are you going to talk before you finally get tired?

And so I'm going to talk to the other guy.

All right.

I think that's some of that going on,

Too.

At some point,

God says,

Come on,

Guys,

Listen to me.

I'm I'm trying to help you here.

I'm trying to talk to you.

Stop,

Slow down,

Sit underneath a waterfall for an hour and just listen to the water and then you'll hear my voice.

But I'm not going to shout because I don't do that.

I don't need to shout.

Well,

This is this is I think this is a beautiful,

Beautiful.

Well,

We're almost at an hour,

So we got to wrap it up.

But this is no,

It's all good.

I mean,

Like my heart is full,

You know,

Especially what we've been talking about right now.

And I love that visual that you gave of God just looking down on us and just going like with pride and going,

Wow,

Like you guys are knocking it out of the park.

You know,

I think that that's,

You know,

I'm going to have that vision moving forward and just it's going to help me.

Yeah,

I'm going to steal that one.

I'm going to steal that from you.

That's all right.

Well,

Thank thank you so much for being on.

And this has been phenomenal.

I really enjoyed it.

So thank you.

And I love what you're doing.

And God bless you for all you're doing to build this kingdom.

I appreciate it.

Thank you.

All right.

God bless you,

Too.

And hang on.

I'll be right back.

And thanks,

Everybody,

For listening.

Bye.